


What Isn't Recalled

by ThePaperclip



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Gen, and they're mostly just filling in gaps and such, but like they're super minor, i found it and my friend saw it and was like post it, no i said, no i said quieter this time, post iiiit she said, this is like super old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21980716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePaperclip/pseuds/ThePaperclip
Summary: It's said, officially, that Chihiro forgot the events of her journey after she left the Spirit World. Well, I say that the heart remembers a lot more than the head.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	What Isn't Recalled

**Author's Note:**

> This is super, super old. But my friend saw it and wanted it published and I was like you know what why not. Anyways, there's probably some elements that aren't very accurate but I do remember making a bit of an attempt to research so it's probably that I maybe left some holes.

When the pigs morph into employees of the bathhouse declaring that she’s won, Chihiro’s heart stops. A moment later, it starts again and she lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. All around her, everyone is cheering. A breathless smile adorns her face. It’s almost like a dream. She’s won, she’s won and can go home and she can’t believe it, it must be a dream and soon she’ll wake up on a borrowed futon once again and have to haul herself up to join Lin for the workday. No, she’ll wake up in her old house, no, her new house, and the fantastical spirits she’s met will fade away from her memory like a dying dream. But that doesn’t matter, because suddenly Haku is there and this is real it’s not a dream you can go home.

Yubaaba grumbles when Chihiro bows her thanks but that doesn’t bring down her mood at all, because the witch could have broken her oath. But she had kept her word, and maybe she’s not that bad after all. Chihiro waves to all her new friends, searching the sea of faces and giving a special smile to Lin and Komajii. Haku grabs her hand and they’re running back across the bridge. Chihiro waves one last goodbye to the bathhouse, drinking in every image in her eyes and trying to grab the memory as a keepsake from this fantastic journey.

Haku leads her back through the maze of restaurants and shops, the sun is as bright and peaceful as when she ad first stumbled into this world. They reach the river, and Haku explains how to get home. But suddenly she doesn’t want to leave, something tells her that once she leaves there’s no going back. 

“We’ll meet again, right? Promise?” It’s a childish wish but a wish nonetheless, but all her friends in this world have suddenly become so precious and Haku, the one who always came back for her and always saved her, ever since she’d lost her little pink shoe so long ago, is the one she’s afraid of losing the most.

“I promise,” he smiles, and pulls her into a hug, “Don’t be afraid.” She turns and starts stepping down the stairs, keeping hold on his hand because she’s not ready to let go, not yet, but his grip is starting to loosen and that only makes her grab harder. “Don’t look back,” He says and their fingers separate.

She nods, focusing straight ahead, and begins to clamber down the rocks. Chihiro's not sure how long it takes her to cross the field. Her thoughts swirl with the faces of her friends, the sights and smells of the bathhouse, the train ride, the taste of Granny Zeniiba’s tea, and everything in between. Several times, she’s tempted to look back, but she doesn’t. She can’t. Somehow, she knows that if she does, she’ll end up in a worse ordeal than what she’s just pulled herself out of and she’s tired. It’s a long trek and she’s tired of walking and where are her parents Haku said they’d be here--then she spots them, and she runs to them. 

The car is dusty and leaves have fallen all over it. The moving people have reported that Chihiro’s family were two weeks too late for the move in. Her father is furious because they say they were all there on time, but there's no denying what the calendar says. Her father is haggling the movers for their possessions as Chihiro and her mother do their best to tidy up the house more and make do with takeout for dinner. Her parents are spooked and worried. Chihiro just feels like she's forgetting something. 

That night, before going to bed, Chihiro pulls down her hair and makes a small double take at her hair tie. It’s a little unfamiliar, purple, and Chihiro likes to think that it glimmered a bit with some unknown magic, but knows she’s being silly. Where did she get it from again? From a friend, she remembers. But she doesn’t remember who. The thought makes her feel unaccountably hollow. Even if she can’t remember who, she can remember the gesture. It was given with love, that much she knows, and a caution, _don’t look back_ , she thinks. But she doesn’t want to let it go. She puts it on her wrist, resolving to keep it. Perhaps as a reminder of that advice, if nothing else. 

Chihiro is older now, in high school, and somehow she’s found herself volunteering to help clean out a river. Chihiro has made a few new friends at her new school. It was Rin, her upperclassmen friend, who got her roped into the event. “If I’m going to get stuck with this stupid job, you’re coming too. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing anything this weekend,” Rin had reasoned.

Chihiro accepted anyway, because Rin was right. Chihiro’s been sort of drifting through life, trying to find her calling. She’d dabbled into art but that was a mess she’d rather not repeat. Right now she’s testing out science, and this sort of counts even if it’s just cleaning up litter. It’s starting to feel like cleaning is the only thing she’s really good at, and she’s not sure how to feel about it. When she confessed this to her neighbor, Jii-chan as he prefers to be called, had said not to worry about it and assured her that she had other talents. She didn’t get to ask what those talents were, because he’d gotten a work call that another tenant’s boiler had broken again, and he’d muttered “What am I, a boiler man?” among other curses at the faulty machine. For some inexplicable reason Chihiro had almost answered “Yes, that’s your job,” but that wasn’t right, Jii-chan was a mechanic who helped the other tenants sometimes…

But that doesn’t matter at this specific moment, because this piece of litter _won’t come out_ , and it’s hard to tell if it’s truly litter or a bit of plant life she should leave alone. Another inspecting touch tells her that that’s definitely something rubber, so it’s man-made and boy, is it stuck in there. Chihiro alerts the coordinator, and rope is fetched. Fifteen minutes later she’s staring at the filthy bicycle the group had pulled out of the water and trying to figure out why she’s got this nagging sense of deja vu that won’t go away no matter how hard she tries.

Rin catches up to her later, when they’re all done for the day, bottled water in hand and kebabs from the catering group who came to feed the volunteers. They sit together on the bridge overlooking the river they’d cleaned up. Rin remarks that actually, those conservationists do have a point with their efforts, I mean look at how clear the river looks now that’s pretty cool. Chihiro nods in agreement, idly biting into her kebab. She decides she quite likes this conservation thing as well. If cleaning is the only thing she’s good at, she reasons, might as well put her talents to good use. She doesn’t notice how her hair tie seems to sparkle just a little brighter in the sunset.

Years later, Chihiro is trying to find a good place to live while she’s going through college. She’s trying to get a Master’s degree in biology, hoping to one day find a way to get into some conservation organization so maybe more rivers could be saved. Maybe. She hopes. To be entirely honest, Chihiro is not quite sure if she’s ready to take this big step and move out yet. It’s honestly frightening, moving forward like this and starting to make her way in this world.

Her parents took her to her grandparents’ place to go property hunting. Theoretically, she could room here, since It’s closer to her campus than her parents’ place. But it's still far enough that she'd have to commute for a while, which Chihiro wants to avoid. Her parents recommend that she chooses a place within that area code anyways, so she can visit her grandparents more often. Her parents want her to see her grandparents some more, because they’re getting old and don’t have much time left. Her parents also also remind her that her new place has to be affordable. Chihiro spends practically the whole day at her grandparents' looking up possible properties and running into frustration after frustration. Eventually, she takes up her grandmother’s request for help cleaning up the storage room to make extra space.

Once they’d gotten all the dust out of the room and boxes set up, Chihiro's mom had come to join them. It’s a trip down memory lane. They get sidetracked when they chance upon a box of photo albums and start flipping through the captured moments. Her grandmother and mother are still cooing over embarrassing childhood photos of her, so Chihiro decides it‘s about time they got back on track and grabs another box to sort through.

Chihiro notes that the box she’s grabbed has her name on it. She opens it, wondering what childhood things her grandmother had kept in here and stops when she spots a little pair of pink shoes. They're unremarkable, really, some generic brand and no logo to name. They’re more gray and dirty with age and dust than pink, and for the life of her she can’t figure out why her grandmother has kept a dingy old pair of shoes Chihiro has long grown out of, nor the swell of emotion she feels at the sight of them.

Chihiro picks them up, “Hey Grandma,” she calls, and the old woman gives a hum of acknowledgement and looks up from the album she’s perusing. Her eyes light up in recognition when they spot the shoes, “Oh, I remember those! When you were very small, Chihiro, you once went to play by the river that used to run in the forest at the park. Once, your shoe fell in and you dived in after it! You nearly gave your poor Granny a heart attack when you were swept up in the river! Luckily your father and grandfather were able to find you on the shore a few meters away, and you even had your shoe beside you! We kept it as a memento of that, we were so grateful you hadn’t drowned.”

“I decided that it we might have to give you swimming lessons if you were going to keep playing by the river,” Chihiro’s mother confessed, “Even after they diverted the river and built apartments there, we still had you keep it up. Bit of a shame they filled it in, it was rather pretty. I wonder, what was that river called again? It’s on the tip of my tongue--”

“Kohaku River,” Chihiro answers without hesitation.

“Yes, that's it--Chihiro, are you crying?”

Chihiro blinks and puts a hand to her cheek, feeling wetness, “It-it’s nothing. Just some dust in my eye,” she says in a thick voice. Her mother frowns, but doesn’t press. Chihiro tries to push down the sadness in her stomach that clogs her throat, while trying to remember that day. She remembers wet, and blue-green and white, and the rush of the current and the wind in her hair no, it was just water, she was drowning, not flying. The thought just makes more tears, and Chihiro shoves the shoes back in the box and pushes it away. Her grandmother, noticing her distress, declares that they’ve done enough for the day and besides, they have to cook dinner.

Later that night, on a whim, Chihiro looks up the apartment complex where Kohaku river was. The complex overlooks the public park her grandmother mentioned, and Chihiro is surprised when she realizes that it’s within her price range and also close enough to her college and it has a few vacant spaces. It’s a little further away from her grandparents’, but she figures that one can’t have everything and decides to list it as a candidate. Tomorrow she’ll pass by to see it. 

The next day Chihiro surveys the front lobby of the apartment complex with the real estate agent. Her agent had told her that there were multiple open units on this floor, and that they could do both if time permitted. They wander through the first unit. Chihiro lets the white walls and city view sink in. It's a nice enough place, but Chihiro isn't sure that she wants to commit. It's not that there's anything wrong with the unit, it's rather nice for her price range. It's something else, and it has nothing to do with the place. It's everything to do with her and her trepidation at taking this next step in her life. This isn't exactly something she can say to the real estate agent in response to the question of, "How did you like this unit?"

There isn't enough time to see the other unit, in the end. But they bump into a pair of men exiting the unit in question on their way to the elevator. The older man is another agent from the same company as Chihiro's real estate agent, the younger man is his client. They all begin to exchange quick pleasantries once it's clear that they're heading to the same direction. It takes a few long moments for Chihiro to realize that she's been staring at the other client.

He's around her age, short dark hair and skin a few shades darker than hers. It’s his eyes that had caught her attention, sharp, green, and they remind her of someone from very very long ago. The memory stirs up something nostalgic and sad in her, like an old friend long forgotten and let go as she’d grown up, and she almost breaks from the overwhelming weight of this world and _dear God she’s not ready she’s absolutely not ready at all what is she doing_. 

But then she catches his eyes again and remembers, _don’t look back_ , and suddenly she is brave again. Chihiro smiles and greets the man, introducing herself. The other smiles back, and introduces himself in return.

Later, when they've all left the elevator, Chihiro tells her agent that she’d like to rent the unit she'd just toured.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it and any constructive criticism or comment is totally welcome!


End file.
